The Law of Large Numbers
by Solstice Zero
Summary: Jack locks the team in the Hub for Christmas. It's an accident, honestly. Christmas fic, Jack/Ianto, team.


**A/N: **This was a Christmas gift for LJ user blue_fjords.

* * *

Tosh considered for a moment. Finally she said, "Cranberry sauce."

"You _would_ like that sour crap." Owen let his head fall back against the side of his workstation. He caught Gwen's disapproving look from where she sat against the couch, across from him. He shrugged. "What? It's pink and disgusting and stains the countertop."

Gwen sighed and waved her hand. "All right, Owen. How about you, then?"

Owen didn't even consider. He just looked at the distant ceiling and wistfully sighed, "Beer."

"Beer isn't a Christmas food!" But Gwen was laughing. "I suppose to you it is. Christmas, New Years, Easter, any bank holiday." She turned to Ianto, sitting to her left, his back also against the couch, pen tapping idly on a form propped against his knees. "Ianto?"

He looked at her, then Owen, then her again. "For once in my life, I agree with Owen."

Owen barked a laugh. "Good man, Ianto."

Jack poked his head out of his office. "What are we talking about?"

All of them held up a hand to stop him leaving the doorway.

"You're banned," Gwen said.

"You've still got an hour." Ianto held up his stopwatch and shook it. "I've been keeping track."

"For once, I approve of Ianto and his smug little stopwatch." Owen gave a little wave to Jack from where he sat on the floor.

"That's the Christmas spirit," Tosh muttered airily.

"At least they aren't fighting." Gwen smiled.

Jack frowned, entirely petulant, mostly aimed at Ianto and Gwen. "Don't I get time off for good behavior?"

Gwen and Ianto shared a look. With their eyes, they considered. It was fun to have Jack sequestered in his office, punishing him for trapping them here. But it would probably be more fun to have him there and not moping. And available for ribbing at every opportunity. Ianto turned to him. "You can come out. But you'll be subject to constant verbal abuse."

"Oh, do you promise?" Jack smirked, leaving the doorway and settling on the arm of the couch above Ianto. "All right, then. You were saying?"

"We were talking about Christmas food. What we're missing." Tosh was sitting against her workstation, her legs stretched out before her, crossed at the ankle. Her shoes were off, stored under her desk.

Jack watched out of the corner of his eye as Gwen stole Ianto's form from him and started to write on it. "And you said beer?" he asked Owen, grinning. He leaned down to Ianto. "Don't we have any beer in the Hub?"

"If I kept any here, it would be gone by mid-afternoon." Ianto wrestled the form back from Gwen, only to have it snatched out of his hands by Jack, who made a noise of indignation and started to write on it.

"I resent that, Ianto, I really do," Owen said. "Besides, not so much a problem anymore, is it?"

Jack looked up and made a face, and Ianto took the opportunity and steal the form back from him. "Well, you've totally put me off whatever I was going to say." He peered over Ianto's shoulder at what he was writing, then swiped the clipboard away again to scribble briefly on it.

Ianto yanked it back. "All right, enough of that." He went back to it.

Gwen let her head fall back on the seat of the couch. "Rhys has all of it set up at home. Turkey, potatoes, stuffing. Poor man doesn't even know why I'm not there right now." She looked at Ianto. "Are you sure you can't do that thing with the water tower like when Suzie kidnapped me?"

"You mean when you _drove Suzie away from the Hub?_" Owen asked.

Gwen waved her had dismissively. Ianto sighed, not pausing in his writing. "I've tried that. It was a miracle it worked the first time."

"Christmas crackers," Jack said.

All of them looked at him.

He blinked at them. "My favorite part of Christmas."

"Do you mean to tell me," Owen said slowly, "that you have at some point had a _normal_ Christmas, which involved Christmas crackers?"

"I've had quite a few Christmasses, Owen. One of them was bound to go right."

"The law of large numbers does tend to work in your favor." Ianto scribbled his signature on the form, then set the clipboard on the coffee table. "I imagine that you've had quite a few go right."

Jack shrugged. "A few. A lot of the time, I'm dying. Wars, epidemics, accidents. History was rife with ways to kill me at Christmas."

Ianto smirked. "The present is rife with ways to kill you. The future."

"Well, you won't be dying tonight, Jack," Gwen said, smiling at him. "We managed to restrain ourselves."

"Even if you are a prat," Owen muttered.

"Well, I haven't the law of large numbers on my side," Tosh said, leaning back to look up at the ceiling. "My Christmasses are usual terrible."

Ianto raised a hand as if clinking a glass. "Hear, hear."

"Come on, you must remember at least one good Christmas, Tosh." Gwen leaned forward.

Tosh looked at her, thinking, her mouth pulled into a frown. Then, she smiled and sat up. "I remember the first Christmas after my parents moved us back from Osaka to London. It was the first time I ever did the thing where you sit on Santa's lap and tell him what you want for Christmas. My mother was trying to get me excited about it while we were waiting in line, but I wasn't having it. I didn't believe in Santa, but I didn't want to tell her that, because I knew it would make her sad. We finally got up to him, and they lifted me up into his lap, and I looked up at this man in a big red suit, made up with rosy cheeks and white eyebrows and everything." She grinned. "And I pulled his beard off and ran away screaming."

They all burst into laughter.

"All of the kids in the line started crying because I'd killed Santa."

Ianto was wiping tears of mirth out of his eyes and rubbing Gwen's back; she'd laughed so hard she'd started choking. Owen leaned over so he could see Tosh. "There's our Tosh, always taking shit apart to see how it works. Even holiday icons."

Tosh beamed, blushing a little. "What about you, Owen? Any good Christmas memories?"

Owen smirked. "All of my Christmas memories are good. I remember this one time I got this bird back to my flat by-"

"And we've had enough of that," Gwen said pointedly. "Ianto, you tell a story."

Owen smirked. "Come on, Ianto, you must have a good one somewhere in you."

Ianto smirked. "Somewhere, perhaps." He looked at his knees for a moment. Then he looked up. "When I was at university, one Christmas I got mugged on the way to my flat."

"_Good_ memories, we said."

Ianto waved a hand. "Give it a moment, Owen. I promise a bit of Christmas joy somewhere in there." Owen gestured for him to continue. "Four guys, your average chavs, popped out of an alleyway screaming 'Merry Christmas' and tackled me to the ground."

"Ah,_ there's _the Christmas joy."

"I feel loved right now, truly. They went through my pockets and kicked the hell out of me and left me in the middle of the road without my wallet or my dignity." Ianto brushed Gwen's hand away as it eked toward his knee. "So I pulled myself off of the road and against a building. My clothes were torn and dirty and I had a split lip. I just sat there, shocked, for a few minutes. Then this man came down the sidewalk. He stopped in front of me, looked down, and smiled." Ianto looked around at them, then grinned. "He dropped a twenty pound note in my lap and said 'Nadolig Llawen'. Then he went off."

Owen, Gwen and Jack laughed. Tosh just frowned. Owen choked out, "He thought you were homeless!"

"That's terrible," Tosh said.

Gwen grinned. "It's fine, Tosh. You made out all right, didn't you, Ianto?"

Ianto smiled. "I made twenty pounds. My wallet was empty."

Behind him, Jack choked and laughed again.

"I seriously considered busking on street corners for the rest of my life."

Gwen got control of herself again, then looked at Jack. "All right, Jack. What about you?"

Jack just smiled. "This."

"Come again?" Owen asked.

"This. I like this. Sitting around, sharing stories. This has been Christmas for me a few times. Being with people I care about, hearing about the things that they care about." He looked around at them. "That a good enough answer?"

Tosh beamed. "That's a fine answer, Jack."

"A fine answer," Ianto murmured, and Jack felt Ianto's fingers wind loosely around his ankle, unseen by the others.

The night passed thusly.

At 0500, the lights came back, the doors unlocked, and everyone slowly rose and stretched. Coats were grabbed; Gwen had her cell phone glued to her ear as she waved to the others, smiling through her explanation to Rhys about why she missed Christmas, all the way out the door. Ianto kissed Tosh on the cheek as she left, and she smiled and returned it, then was gone. Owen gave a cheerful wave and was off.

When Jack turned his back for a moment, Ianto disappeared. Jack frowned to himself, but let it go. They were all exhausted; he couldn't have been asked to stay. Entirely understandable. He went into his office and sat back in his chair, sighing, closing his eyes.

When he opened them again, there was a package on his desk. And a note.

_Happy Christmas, Jack. – I_

Jack leaned forward and picked up the gift. He unwrapped it.

It was a Christmas cracker.

He smiled, then pulled it open.


End file.
